


supersynchronous orbit

by nanrea



Series: Relaystuck [1]
Category: Homestuck, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abandonment, Crossover, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, I'm not sure if that last one needs saying but, Isolation, Space zombies, Species Swap, Survival, Video Game Mechanics, but like not on purpose, for mass effect, head canons for mass effect stuff everywhere, not that homestuck can't be pretty violent but ahh mass effect might be a bit more violent, omni tools: how do they work, the types of emotions associated with zombies, treated as real world mechanics for a super advanced civilization, trolls to various mass effect races
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-01-28 09:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12603372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanrea/pseuds/nanrea
Summary: It was supposed to be just a routine trip on a cheap freighter out to another set location in the Attican Traverse. Spoiler alert: it was not a routine trip.Now, alone with only a VR for company, Dirk has to figure out how to survive on a ghost ship whose crew might not be as dead as they should be.





	1. Mission One: open the pod bay doors, please, hal

Dirk stayed huddled behind the chair he was supposed to strap himself into for a really long time. One of the doors to the little escape pod kept closing and opening and sparking, and the acrid smoke wafting in from the pod bay itched and tickled his nose. He pinched his nose shut and breathed through his mouth, and waited.

He waited a long time.

A shadow shifted in the bay, and a weird mechanical chirping noise made him almost go look, but his Bro had told him to stay hidden, and to wait for him. Dirk squished himself back against the wall as small as he could, where no one could see him from the door.

“No life forms are detected on board this vessel,” he heard the ship’s VI say. There was more chirping, and then the whoosh of the pod bay doors closing.

Dirk waited, and waited, and no one came.

_

An especially loud spark made the door stop moving, and the lights flickered and turned off, making it dark in the little escape pod. Eery red emergency light flickered on along the floor, and filtered in from the pod bay, but everything was silent.

Dirk’s omnitool gave a soft ping; the tone that meant he should eat something.

He remembered when his Bro gave him his ‘tool a couple months ago. 

_ “You’re a little young yet, but you can figure it out.” His large hand ruffled Dirk’s hair. “I’ve programmed in some reminders for you already, to take naps and eat and shit but the rest is yours to program.” _

_ Dirk wrinkled his nose, and Bro just laughed at him. “I know I need ‘em when I’m on set. I forget to eat all the time when I’m busy, and I can already tell you’re following in my footsteps. We’ll both need them when we get to Terra Nova, kid.” _

He listened to it ping again, and sighed. He was hungry. He brought up the display and thumbed off the alert, then used the flashlight ap to look around the little pod, struggling to remember when the first mate had shown it to them when they’d boarded two weeks ago. She’d shown them how to bring down the safety bars, the door controls, and . . . there. In the back of the pod, the emergency supply storage.

_ “Life pods like these have food, water, and oxygen stores for up to three months.” _

He popped open the storage space, and saw it was full of packets of space food, sealed and neatly stacked. He pulled one out and wrinkled his nose. ‘Emergency MRE,’ the front of the package read. ‘No preparation necessary.’ In tiny font, it said ‘EXP. 2192’.

He carefully opened it with the little knife he could make with his omnitool (that he absolutely did not tell his brother he could make) and broke off a piece.

It was the worst thing he had ever tasted.

Swallowing it was a struggle, but it was food, and he had to stay here. He had to wait for his bro.

After he swallowed down the rest of the MRE, he was thirsty and started his search for water. There were three other doors in the back of the pod, one below the food, one, the biggest door, taking up half the back wall, and a third above the food but too high for him to reach.

Water was hidden behind the bottom door, and behind the biggest panel in the back of the shuttle was a very simple toilet and a small sink. There was a drain in the floor too. Experimentally he turned on the sink, and a thin trickle of chemical smelling water came out. He wrinkled his nose and turned it off.

Once he was done, he huddled back behind one of the chairs. He hadn’t stayed hidden, but he hadn’t been spotted, so he hadn’t technically broken his brother’s orders.

He put one of his school lessons on his omnitool, and listened to the soft lecturing voice of the teacher talk about basic coding, stuff he’d learned a while ago but her voice was nice, familiar. 

And he waited. 

_

He doesn’t know how long he waited before he finally braved coming out of the escape pod.

The doors were still broken, one side completely open while the other was jammed halfway. The lights in the bay were still off, leaving everything lit in red emergency lighting, and the access doors to the main cargo hold were shut, the locking panel glowing red.

As he edged out of the escape pod, he noted that one other set of pod doors were open, and the other three were closed. That meant some of the other passengers and crew must have gotten away, he was pretty sure. 

There wasn’t anybody else in the pod bay. Some storage units stood against one wall, and a rack full of tools stood next to the doors, but everything was silent save for the near silent hiss of the ventilation system.

“Hello?” he finally managed to whisper. “Is, um, AR active?” 

The ship’s VI shimmered into existence, holographic body jittering oddly. “Greetings. This system is programmed to respond to that name. You are Passenger 1111, name Dirk Strider. You are authorized to interact with this system. Please state the nature of your inquiry.”

“Where’s my Bro?”

AR’s hologram flickered. “There is no data available that matches your inquiry. Please restate your inquiry.”

Dirk swallowed hard, fists clenching. “Where is everybody?”

“The parameters of your inquiry are too broad. Please restate your inquiry.”

He could barely swallow now. “Wh-where’s my brother? Where’s the crew? What happened? Why’s it so dark and why are the doors locked?” His eyes burned as he hunched in on himself. “Why hasn’t anybody come to find me?”

“Inquiry unclear. Please state your inquiries individually to allow for processing limitations in this system.”

Dirk didn’t ask again. He huddled under the glowing red light of the door lock, and cried.

-

“Awaiting restatement of inquiry.” The calm tone of the VI finally made Dirk look up. The holographic man had asked that five times now, in the same tone. Dirk should probably answer him now that he’d stopped crying.

His bro said it was ok to cry, but that you had to keep going when you were done. Dirk had to keep going.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Simple questions, one at a time. He could do this.

“Where is Ambrose Strider?” It was weird, saying his brother’s real name out loud. Bro was not a fan of that name, and just let Dirk call him Bro.

“Passenger number 1110, Ambrose Strider’s last registered activity was in the starboard podbay.” 

“Why isn’t he here, then?”

“This program cannot infer motivations. However, it should be noted that this ship is equipped with two podbays running along both sides of the ship, and your current location is the port podbay.”

“Oh.” Dirk stared at his shoes. He went the wrong way, then, he must have thought Dirk went to that one. “Is he ok, then?”

“This program cannot assess that information.” The VI flickered, that weird static buzzing around his form again.

“Is he still there?”

“No.” 

“Did he leave on a pod?” It was impossible that Bro could have left without him, but maybe he didn’t have a choice or something.

“No.”

“Where is he, then?” Dirk pushed down the urge to pile more questions on: why didn’t he come here, why didn’t he find me, why, why, why. AR staticed out, and Dirk blinked. That was weird.

“Passenger number 1110 is located in the aft cargo bay.” The VI’s holographic form reappeared. 

“Then I need to go there!” Dirk jumped to his feet and raced to the door.

“The aft cargo bay is currently inaccessible. No access to other areas of the ship is allowed until lockdown is lifted and the captain approves of free movement for the passengers and crew.”

“But I need to get to him!” He pounded on the door’s stubbornly locked haptic interface. “Open the fucking door!”

“No. The aft cargo bay is currently inaccessible. No access to other areas of the ship is allowed until lockdown is lifted and the captain approves of free movement for the passengers and crew.”

He spun around to glare at the flickering hologram. “Where is the captain?”

“Captain Aurthur Rutledge is in the aft cargo bay.”

“Can I message him or something? I need to stay with Bro.”

“Captain Aurthur Rutledge is currently unable to receive or send messages.”

“Why?”

“Captain Aurthur Rutledge is dead.” The VI flickered.

Dirk sat down. “What do you mean, dead?”

“Captain Aurthur Rutledge suffered massive trauma to the thoracic region sufficient to cause all major organ function to cease, and has succumbed to his wounds.” AR’s tone never changed no matter what it said.

“What about Bro, Ambrose? Is he dead?”

“Yes. Passenger number 1110 Ambrose Strider suffered a major wound to the head and subsequent massive trauma to the thoracic region sufficient to cause all major organ function to cease, and has succumbed to his wounds.”

“No.” Dirk felt like something had wrapped tight around his ribs and was squeezing him, squeezing him until he couldn’t breathe anymore. 

“My information is correct.” AR was impassive, implacable. “Passenger number 1110 Ambrose Strider suffered a major wound to the head and subsequent massive trauma to the thoracic region sufficient to cause all major organ function to cease, and has succumbed to his wounds. He is dead.” 

Dirk didn’t have anymore questions after that.

-

He felt cold metal against his burning face, and ignored the persistent pinging of his omnitool. The alert Bro had programmed in to remind him to eat had been going off for a while now, but without Bro there to also remind him, it was easy to ignore.

His eyes hurt. The lights in the podbay were a dull red, barely bright enough to illuminate the place, almost perfect for his light sensitive vision, so that wasn’t why. He turned his head, pressed his other cheek against the cold floor, soothing the ache there, though his chest continued to feel like it was full of rocks and his throat still felt thick and clogged. His mind kept circling back to that thought.

His bro was dead.

His mom had died three years ago, and that had felt like the worst thing ever, but this was worse somehow. Then, Bro had been there, promising to stay with him forever, that he wouldn’t leave like Mom had, holding him as he cried, telling him it was alright to cry, five year olds could cry, twenty five year olds could cry, it didn’t matter how old you were, you could still cry and feel sad, but eventually you had to keep going.

Keep going.

Going where?

He remembered his other bro being there too, his oldest bro. There, he guessed.

He pushed himself off the floor. He just had to keep going. He stumbled back to his broken pod and curled up in his original spot, wrapping up in an emergency blanket that had been stashed under the chair next to him, silenced his chirping omnitool alarm, and forced himself to sleep.

-

The next few days passed in a haze. He ate mechanically when his ‘tool beeped at him, drank when it told him to, used the limited facilities as needed, and spent a lot of time either staring into space or sleeping.

It was dumb, it felt dumb, his brother would be disappointed in him for staying still instead of whatever it is he should be doing, but he couldn’t make himself do anything else for a while. What else was there?

Eventually, though, even grief got boring, and he felt restless. He could hear his bro’s voice in his head, muttering about plans. His brother always had plans, travel plans and scripting plans and movie plans and study plans. Dirk felt like he was disappointing that great planning legacy for barely being able to plan to take a shower using the pod sink’s detachable faucet. Not that there was much water for a good shower: just enough to take the itch out of his scalp and the dirt from his skin.

He needed a plan. He needed to be able to open the door.

The VI remained stubborn on that point: no opening the door until the captain signed off on it. But the captain was dead, so that wasn’t happening.

He wasn’t going to get in trouble for hacking if his Bro was-- not around to get mad at him.

Once he got the door open, he could head up to the bridge. He didn’t know for sure what he could do up there, but that seemed to be the best place for getting help. His bro had talked the first mate into giving them a tour of the bridge about a week into their three week long journey on the freighter, so Dirk knew where it was, and even what some of the equipment did. Once he got there, maybe he could figure out how it worked. The bridge wasn’t very big, and the living quarters were close by, so maybe he could sleep in a bed. He was getting really sick of sleeping on the floor or in the escape pod chairs.

And maybe he wouldn’t have to get help. Maybe there was someone else still on the ship, and they just haven’t lifted the lockdown because they didn’t know he was still down here. Maybe he could find out if the people on the escape pods were ok. He’d met some other kids who were also traveling on the freighter: travel to some of the remote colonies was only available if you booked cheap on cargo haulers, his bro had told him, like they were doing, the they were using it because it was a lot cheaper that way too even if it took longer.

Jake and Jade were brother and sister, travelling with their grandparents. They’d already known Roxy, too, because they’d all grown up together. They were going to the Citadel, and so were the salarians who had also booked passage on the ship. Dirk had been taken to the podbay by a salarian, actually, almost as soon as the alarm sounded. They’d all gotten onto the same pod, but Dirk had to stay for his bro, so he’d ducked into a different one when they weren’t looking.

Salarians were supposed to be smart. He bet they’d have a plan. He just had to get to the bridge so maybe he could talk to them.

Dirk fiddled with his omnitool and frowned. One of the salarians had been showing Roxy and him a cool trick on his omnitool when it happened, which is why they took him with in the first place. A hacking trick. He said it was cheap and easy and ‘for total noobth’, but if you put omnigel into a door’s haptic interface, it would short it out and force the door to open.

To get omnigel, he’d have to figure out how to get his omnitool to deconstruct an item into its basic components. So far all he’d managed to do was scan a couple MREs and accidentally set an emergency blanket on fire.

He frowned as he put another object into the scanning field of his omnitool, a hammer he’d dug out of one of the lockers in the pod bay this time. The ‘tool beeped, telling him what the hammer was made of: an iron and carbon alloy with a porous sheathing around one end composed principally of polymers of isoprene and water. Clicking a dropdown menu, he looked at the list of options and chose “reconstitute” instead of “incinerate” this time.

The hammer glowed orange as the microfabricators initiated, manipulating mass effect fields small enough to tear apart the hammer. Dirk watched, fascinated, as the substance, which really did look gel like while under the influence of the omni tool’s fabricator, condensed and settled into a small node in the band of his omni tool.

“Huh.” He waved his arm around. It didn’t feel much heavier, even though the hammer had been pretty big. He opened another menu, the one he’d had to circumnavigate his bro’s password locking on to get into, and selected “omni blade.” The size options had increased, and he picked the biggest setting.

A glowing orange blade half again the length of his arm flashed out, and he grinned. His bro wouldn’t let him play with swords, and this was still a little too short to be a proper one, but Dirk swung it around anyway, pretending for a moment that he was fighting off a bad guy. Maybe that weird chirping thing he heard the first day he was stuck here.

Yeah. He could fight off one of those things, whatever they were, easily with this thing. Especially if he could make it longer. He retracted the blade, watching as it reconverted into gel and settled back into the wide band of his omni tool. 

He didn’t want to ruin too many of the tools in this storage closet, just in case he got in trouble for it, but that didn’t stop him from converting two screwdrivers, some nails, and also that scorched emergency blankets into omni gel. He played a bit with the length of the sword, finding a length he liked and setting that as the default, then looked at how much omni gel he had left after that was allocated.

Five units. He wondered if that was enough for the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright! here's the first chapter of possibly the first part of maybe a multipart series of basically homestuck characters transplanted into the ME universe into situations as close to their canon upbringings as I could think to get them. Starting with Dirk just because. I'm also writing this, or am going to TRY to write this, as my nanowrimo project this year, so it might update pretty often! it kind of depends on how I feel about where chapter breaks should be and so on and so forth. tags will be adjusted as the story develops! I already have a pretty good idea for how Dirk's part here is supposed to go, and I've also got some ideas for the other kids as well
> 
> some notes: he's like, about 7 or 8 at the start, yes the ship was attacked by geth. this is set about 5 years before me1, so the geth could conceivably have been active at that time but idk if it's canon. I guess I also don't really care if it is haha


	2. Mission Two: hello hal do you read me?

In the end Dirk had to convert three more screwdrivers, some funny looking drill bits, and four weird looking plates that his scanner told him were shot gun mods into omni-gel before he had enough to unlock the door.

Getting his omnitool to interact with the door’s locking mechanism was another issue. AR was absolutely no help at all, unsurprisingly. All he said was “Information on bypassing encrypted mechanisms is strictly prohibited.” His omnitool’s database didn’t have any information on it either, and for a moment Dirk was irritated with his bro before--

He needed to get out of here. He had a plan: get out, go through the forward cargo bay, to the crew and passenger quarters, and the bridge. Go to the bridge, and try to get help. That was the plan. He just needed to follow the plan. He bypassed another of his bro’s blocks and entered a new menu.

>Haptic interface menu:  
    >Two Haptic interfaces detected  
        >Virtual Intelligence “AR”  
            >Interact? Y/N  
        >Emergency Door Lock “Port Podbay Door”  
            >Decrypt? Y/N

Dirk considered this carefully. He didn’t see any option to use omni-gel, so he picked ‘decrypt’ and blinked as a bunch of circles popped up with an arrow on the outside. Inside the circles, red dots moved and orange dots held still.

He recognized this game! He was really good at it. All he had to do was get the arrow to the middle.

It only took him one time, and he was kind of disappointed by how easy it was.

With a chime and a hiss, the door slid open, revealing the gloom of the unlit hall between the aft and forward cargo bays.

Across the wide hall, the starboard podbay door was jammed halfway out, scorch marks and dents showing why it hadn’t shut. The double doors to the aft cargo bay were closed, but the doors to the forward cargo bay stood open, again covered in scorch marks and one particularly large hole blasted right out of the frame, keeping one half of the door lodged inside the frame. The other half of the door was stuck halfway out.

Dirk had only taken one hesitant step out when there was a bang echoing through the hallway. He froze. “AR?” he whispered.

The hologram fizted into existence, stuttering and even jankier than before. “What is your inquiry?”

“What was that noise?” There was now a low scraping sound, and he thought it might be coming from the aft bay, but it was echoing and hard to tell.

“My s-sensors indicate movement.”

Dirk spun around at another bang, this time distinctly against the aft door. He backed away, breathing hard. “AR, what is moving?”

“M-m-my s-sensors--”

The door shuddered, the locking mechanism starting to move.

Dirk spun around and sprinted into the other cargo bay without waiting to see what might be behind the door.

The cargo bay was a mess of scattered and broken crates, with no clear path through it. He scrambled around a container that almost reached the ceiling, and attempted a flash step through the brief clear area beyond it, but nearly tripped over a red and white striped cylander. Groaning sounded behind him, and a burst of adrenaline got him up onto a low row of crates. Against his will his head turned to look back, and he almost screamed.

Shoving their way past the broken door were humanoid figures, eyes and mouths glowing blue in the red tinged darkness. Blue glowed from cables wrapped around their bodies, showing that they were humanoid, and stretched open their mouths into hideous gaping maws from which hissing groans and yowls when they spotted him, and their claws outstretched in grasping motion as their slow shuffle increased to a lumbering jog.

ZOMBIES!

Dirk jerked around, desperately scanning for a route ahead. He leapt off the crate and sprinted through a small gap of clear floor, trying as best he could to keep his heading in the tumbled and towering mess, his small frame wriggling through holes tight enough he didn’t think those things could get through.

Their cries echoing in the bay made it impossible to tell where they were, and Dirk nearly cried when he saw he had reached a corner. Desperately, he spun around, looking for a gap, a ledge, anything to grab onto. He nearly missed the slight ledge just within his reach and scrambled up just in time to see the first thing round a corner and spot him again.

With a lunge he didn’t realize his eight year old body had been capable of, he jumped across a small gap and pulled himself higher up onto the slope of a toppled crate, barely keeping his balance as he raced up its incline. The creature cried out its rage at being unable to follow, scraping ineffectual at the side of the crate he had jumped onto instead of following his path up onto it.

 _The plan!_ He remembered. Reach the crew cabins, there was another door there and he could lock it and keep the zombies out.

He spun around, trying to orient himself. He could just barely see both sides of the cargo bay: he was maybe three fourths of the way across. He plotted a course: he jumped from this crate to another, close by, not stopping. He ran, leaping to the top of another crate, and another, along the top of a broken row to a small space, dropped down, darted through the clearing and around another large crate, to the door!

It was locked! The groans of the zombies were farther than they had been, but they’d get him if he didn’t get the door open.

“AR,” he shouted. “Open the crew deck door, AR!”

“The c-c--crew d-deck  isssssssssss c-currently inaccessib-b-b-ble. Nnnnnno a-a-a-access to other areaaaaaaaaaas of the sh-ship is allow-w-w-wed unt-t-til lock-k-d-down is lift-t-t-ted and the captainnnnnnnnnn app-p-p-roves of free m-m-movement for the passsssssssssssengers and c-c-c-crew.”

The hologram couldn’t even resolve into the image of a man anymore. Whatever was wrong with it, it was a lot worse now.

“Shit,” Dirk said, and brought up his omnitool, navigating quickly to the new menu. He tried to ignore how his fingers shook and made him ram his stupid decrypting arrow into an orange block on his first attempt. A little timer he hadn’t noticed was running out, which made him shake harder. Frustrated, he tried ramming the arrow through when a gap seemed to clear, and lost it again when a red square ran into it. “Fuck!” The arrow reappeared, but the timer ran out before he could even clear the second ring.

“No!” Dirk was crying; he could feel the hot tears stream down his face as the screen flashed at him, DECRYPTION FAILED emblazoned in red across the little game.

>Manual Override? Y/N

“Yes,” he screeched as the first zombie shambled back into view, its hideous malformed glowing eyes locking on him immediately.

>25 Omnigel Required. Y/N

“YES.” He slammed his hand against the red glow of the lock. “Yes, yes, yes!”

Omnigel flowed out of the divots on his tool, glowing in the mass effect fields as it fitted against the lock. He fell backward through the door as it slid open, nearly losing his footing. He slammed his hand against the door’s closing mechanism, but nothing happened.

“AR, close the door!”

The only response was a noise like audio gravel.

“Fuck!” Dirk brought up his omnitool again, flicking desperately through menus. “Close the door, close the door, close the door!” he shrieked as he searched, hitting anything that seemed like it might get the door closed.

The doors, for once, seemed to listen. They slammed shut just as the first zombie had nearly reached him.

And then popped open again as they detected a blockage. The zombie had got an arm through.

Dirk screamed and slashed out, his omnitool forming a blade instantly as it sensed him close his fist as if around the handle of a sword.

The blade sliced cleanly through the thing, and it fell forward as an arm came off, clearing the door, and as it did, the door slammed shut, blocking the other zombies from entering.

Dirk slashed out again, hitting the still moving zombie a second time. Its scream was ungodly loud in the narrow crew corridor, and Dirk screamed back, desperately stabbing at it again and again until finally, finally, it stopped moving.

The door trembled against the thumping of the other zombies. If he didn’t do something, one of them might hit the opening mechanism and he’d be dead. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

He stabbed the locking mechanism.

The lights around the door went dark. The door stayed closed.

Gasping for breath, he stumbled backwards. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, fuck, fuck. His back hit a wall and he leaned over and threw up.

Gross.

His heart pounded in his chest and he felt dizzy and light. He slid down next to his puddle of puke and tried not to die. His eyes cast around, and locked on the zombie on the other end of the corridor.

It was disintegrating. He watched as it flaked away to black dust, the blue lights darkening and leaving him alone in the dull red glow of the emergency lights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure it entirely matters when it comes to husks, but if you want to know the former identity of the first husk Dirk manages to kill, if you look into your heart, you will find the answer you seek


	3. Mission Three: breaking up is hard to do

After a while Dirk had to get up. The hall was starting to smell bad, and he had to follow the Plan. The Plan was not a thing that had stopped from keeping happening.

The door to the bridge was also locked, and so were the port and starboard crew bays, but at this point decrypting doors had lost a lot of its excitement. With tired hands, he easily defeated the encryption on the bridge door and entered.

It was a small room, for such a large ship. Captain’s seat, pilot’s seat, navigator’s seat. Dirk had no idea where the communication hub would be. He climbed into the pilot’s seat at the front.

The interfaces were down, of course. Without anyone to crew it, the haptics that provided the controls to the bridge were deactivated.

It probably wasn’t really worth a shot, but he tried anyway. “AR?”

The VI’s port gave a half hearted fizzle and an “Rrr” before dying. Yeah, it was totally broken. Dirk wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed like those attackers had introduced a nasty virus into the ship’s systems. He had learned a little bit about what viruses were, but not how to get them out. He was probably totally fucked.

He stared out the window for a while, slumped in the pilot’s seat. He was going to die here, on a ship full of space zombies.

His body couldn’t seem to decide between crying or screaming, so instead he was just frozen. That seemed ok too.

After a while, though, he couldn’t stand the feel of his sweaty and dirty clothes. He slid down and left the bridge, leaving the door open behind him. Honestly he wasn’t sure he could get it to shut anyway, at least not without stabbing another control panel, and he didn’t want to do that if it broke the door.

He easily decrypted the door to the passengers’ quarters he’d shared with his Bro and also the Harley-English’s and the Lalondes. The space was pretty bare bones, which, as his Bro had explained, was why buying passage on Kowloon freighters was so cheap.

This hadn’t been their first trip on this kind of ship, but it had been one of the most bare bones. The passenger quarters had temporary walls that could be pulled out to give privacy screens, but they definitely weren’t soundproof, so it was still like everyone shared one big room. There was a small bathroom that everyone had to share, and a small kitchen unit also shared by everyone, unless they knew someone on the crew who would let them use the crew quarters, which were a little nicer and had a better kitchen area.

Dirk numbly stripped out of his dirty clothes and made use of the passenger bathroom, finally for as long as he wanted. It was jarring to not have anyone knock on the door after a mere ten minutes.

When he was done, he put on clean clothes from his suitcase, and crawled into his bunk. It was far too quiet to sleep, but he wondered if he pulled the blanket over his head, he could just make it go away for a little while.

He must have drifted off to sleep after all, because he woke up when a loud cackle echoed through the hall and into the room. He’d rolled out of bed and had his omniblade out before even registering the sound as the crackle of an out of sync transmission and not a pack of space zombies.

He didn’t feel dumb at all about worrying about space zombies. When he was in the hall, he could still hear them scraping against the cargo bay door if he listened close.

The crackle echoed again, and this time he could sort of make out a voice in it. He crept down the hall and into the bridge, where an interface glowed next to the captain’s chair.

He crawled into it and touched the light.

“--SV Peregrine, -- you copy? I rep--t, MSV --regrine, do you copy?” The voice was familiar, probably one of the salarians that had been around but hadn’t talked to him or his friends. It was probably ok to answer anyways, even if he didn’t know them. It’s not like Bro would say anything about it.

“Yes?” he answered.

“ _MSV Peregrine_ , copy that. This is Aesarth Rarale, reporting for Escape pod S-02. Can I get a status report, _Peregrine_?”

“Um,” Dirk said. “Bad?”

“ _Peregrine_ , who is manning the helm, there?” The voice sounded sharper and more impatient.

“Um, this is Dirk. Strider?” he answered.

“One of the human children? What kind of joke is this?” Salarians always sounded kind of sharp and angry to him, but this one sounded outright pissed, now.

“I’m not-”

“I must insist that you either desist from this human ‘joke’ or put an adult on immediately, child.”

“There is no one else,” he cried. “I’m alone and the ship is full of space zombies!”

“Young human, this is a serious situation! You cannot make jokes at a time like this! I must insist that you put an adult on, even if it is your equally atrocious ‘Bro’ person.”

“I can’t.” Dirk could feel his eyes burning again and blinked furiously. “Bro’s dead. I told you, there is no one else.”

“Young human, do you not understand that we have been out of contact for at least eight of your human earth days? And that we are stranded on a barely charted Sanctuary world? This is highly illegal! I realize humans are fairly new to the galaxy and that you have little respect for Counsel Authority, but you must respect the severity of the situation! Put. An. Adult. On. Immediately.”

“I can’t! I can’t!” Dirk was fighting back sobs now. He couldn’t believe he was losing his cool like this, but the salarian wouldn’t stop yelling.

“Young human--gurk!” There was a thud and a popping sound, and a distant shout of “Stop yelling at the kid, shitfuck asslick!” said with a heavy lisp. Dirk felt something ease in his chest at that. At least the one incredibly cool salarian was still alive. He could hear more cursing in the background, this time far less coherent, which meant the second coolest salarian was also still alive. He tried to cling to that instead of the burning feeling of crying that was overwhelming him right now.

“Dirk?” Psii said a minute later. “Tell us what happened.”

“I-I-”

“Hey, ok. Dirk, just answer each question carefully. Are you alone?”

“Yes”

“You said there’s no adult there to answer the radio. Is that true?”

Dirk gulped in a huge breath of air. “Yes.”

“Ok. Is there anyone you could get later to answer?”

“No.” This came out as a bit of a wail.

“Ok, ok, Dirk. Why are you still on the ship?”

“I had to wait for Bro. I was in an escape pod but he never came.” Ok, now he was pretty much openly sobbing into the radio, but Psii was, as he said, a surprisingly cool dude. Old, especially for a salarian, but dealing with his much younger brood brother Mituna had taught him the patience to deal with kids.

“Dirk, Dirk, I need you to focus on answering my questions. Did you see who attacked the ship?”

“N-no?”

“Did you hear them say anything?”

“N-I don’t know.”

“Can you explain? Why don’t you know?”

Dirk had to think back. That first day seemed so long ago. “There was clicking and chirping, and AR answered like someone had asked him something. I don’t know why he would do that if someone hadn’t said something to him.”

“Clicking and chirping?” Psii sounded confused.

“Like a robot or a really weird bird or something.” Dirk tried to think of anything that made those sounds, but the only thing he could think of was computer noises.

“What did AR tell them?”

“I don’t, something about how nobody was on the ship.” He shuddered, aftershocks from crying tightening his throat. “When I asked him where everyone was he said they were all in the aft cargo bay, and they were dead.”

“Ok, Dirk.” Psii paused, then asked, “Did you go in the aft cargo bay to see?”

“No,” Dirk said. “When I got out of the podbay, things were moving in there, so I ran away.”

“What things?”

“The zombies.”

“Dirk,” Psii said, sounding more confused than anything. “What do you mean by zombies?”

“I mean like,” Dirk paused. They were like zombies, yeah, but he couldn’t really recognize any of them, so maybe they weren’t zombies? “Like. They had weird cables and wires and stuff coming out of them, and they looked like zombies.”

“Weird wires and cables?”

“Yeah, like, computer cables and stuff.”

“And . . . what’s a zombie?”

Dirk blinked. “Salarians don’t have zombies?”

“No, Dirk. What are they?” Psii sounded genuinely interested.

“They’re like, dead people, who walk around and want to eat brains and stuff. I can’t believe salarians don’t have zombies.”

Psii paused, and in the background Dirk could hear that Aesarth guy saying this all sounded preposterous. Psii shooshed him, and then shooshed his brood brother when he began cursing the guy out.

“Ok, Dirk, I have to admit this changes our course of action a bit,” Psii finally answered. “Are you willing to work with us to get help?”

“Yes!” Dirk leaned forward. “Yes, what do I do?”

“For now I need you to try to contact the other escape pods,” the old salarian said. “We’ll be going out of shortwave radio range very soon, so I can’t tell you much else other than the _Peregrine_ seems to be in orbit around the planet, so we’ll only be able to communicate for short periods of time while you’re directly over us. Do you understand?”

Dirk thought about it. “Like a satellite?”

“Exactly like a satellite, Dirk, very good. In fact, the ship now basically is a satellite, and you need to use it to help locate the other survivors. Will you do that?”

“Of course!”

“Good. You’re going to be goin-- out of range here in a m--ute, Dirk, but don-- worry, we-- -ack in range in -- ---rs.”

Dirk leaned forward, alarmed. “Psii? Psii?”

“L--- -ike -ts al---y ha-----g. S--- --fe.”

And with that, the line went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow yeah definitely don't expect daily updates, but the flow is feeling pretty good right now. otoh I'm working an 11 hour shift tomorrow, so we'll see if that stays the case haha
> 
> also I am taking extreme liberties on psii's characterization and kinda basing it on temporaldecay's version of psii in her super amazing [Distrait Life of Mistakes series, ](https://archiveofourown.org/series/38968) but like, he doesn't even have any lines in canon and in fact shows up for like, a max of 3 pages so it's whatever
> 
> and I have no idea how salarian family units organize themselves, so I'm just going to make it up on the fly and you can tell me if I'm getting it wrong I guess


	4. Mission Four: resource assessment

After dragging all the furniture he could move to block the cargo bay door, Dirk didn’t move from the captain’s chair for anything more than necessary for several days. At one point he had gathered half the blankets into the cockpit and made himself a nest on the captain’s chair, but beyond that, and the occasional visit to the passenger cabin for food and necessities, he camped out in the cockpit.

In that time he had radio contact with the salarians several more times, and made contact with two other groups of survivors, including Jake’s Grandma. Psii told him that the ship appeared to fully orbit the planet once every eleven hours, which meant he was pretty high up, or going slow. Psii told him he’d have to get the VI back online for them to learn more than that, since Dirk didn’t have the necessary astro-navigational training to be able to tell much more about his orbit than what Psii could observe through him.

Miss Penny, as she told him to call her, was the other person he could reach. She was a crewperson from the _Mendicant_ , and the junior communications officer. She had managed to reach her escape pod with another member of the crew, but couldn’t reach anyone else with her radio. Jake’s Grandma could communicate with her husband’s pod, but he couldn’t reach anyone else either.

Everyone’s radios were fairly short range, according to Psii, and he could only stay in touch with each group for about a half hour before going out of range again. The biggest gap of time was between Psii’s group and Penny’s group, with about seven hours of dead air. Dirk hated it.

As far as Dirk had been able to tell, they were the only survivors. Getting an accurate body count on the ship would require access to the internal cameras, but those, like access to navigation, life support, the engines, long range communications, and everything else, were locked out. It was only because of failsafe programming that Dirk could answer them at all. Psii and Penny both thought that if Dirk could be coached through restoring the VI they might be able to use it to access some of the other systems to get a distress signal to the relay beacon. Next time he could contact them, Psii was going to start coaching him through it.

Dirk shifted under the blanket he’d dragged into the cockpit. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but the air seemed colder than it did yesterday. He huddled closer to the backrest of the captain’s chair, knees tucked up, and stared out through the viewport into the starry abyss, and slowly drifted into a restless doze.

\---

“Dirk, describe to me what the VI’s data core looks like.”

Psii’s clipped tones echoed weirdly from the cockpit. Dirk had managed to open the hatch in the subfloor behind the pilot’s chair, and was somewhere under the control deck in a crawlspace that gave access to the ship’s computer banks. He had to shout to be heard from so deep into the ship’s computer mainframe.

“Um, it looks like . . . three stacks of boxes?” he turned and called back. “They’re all kind of red?”

“Ah, a standard VI-1025 series data core. This can be tricky. You’ll need to remove the damaged cores and replace them in the correct order, Dirk. Do it wrong and you could destroy the whole system. Do it wrong another way and you could end up with a rogue AI. That’s human VI systems for you, always pushing the boundaries and installing hardware with so much extra space it just begs a program to expand beyond its parameters, especially if, as I strongly suspect given the other information you’ve told me, a virus has been introduced.”

Dirk hoped Psii wouldn’t continue on like that for too long. It really was starting to get colder, and also it was cramped and uncomfortable in this tight space. He poked idly at one of the boxes, and blinked as it lit up blue before fading back to red.

“Alright, now you want to eject the data modules, which should reset the core. Once you do that, there should be only one stack that lights up all blue. You’ll need to transfer these intact data modules to a new stack, which can be tricky because they all have to be set in the same core. Do you understand?”

“Um, sure,” Dirk said. Underneath the center stack was a button, conveniently labeled “reset,” which Dirk obligingly pushed. “Ok, I ejected the modules.” Um. “Um.”

“Good, good, now, the easiest way to do it is to take the top--”

“Psii?” he interrupted. “All the blocks are kind of messed up.”

Psii stopped. “What do you mean? Messed up? Dirk, you need to be more specific, we are working on limited time and have only about ten of your Earth minutes left, according to Aesarth’s time conversions.”

Dirk studies the configuration of blocks in front of him. “I mean, there isn’t a single stack of lit modules. There’s like, seven lit modules, and they’re in all three stacks, kind of messed up.”

“This is worse than I thought. Clearly there is a tenacious virus indeed in the system, if it can disrupt a full system reboot of the VI core. Obviously the most simple method of attempting to correct would be to retry rebooting.”

Dirk hit the button again. “They’re in different positions, but they’re still all messed up.”

“Hmm. Unfortunate,” Psii answered as Dirk hit the button a few more times, watching the pattern change. “This will require more consideration. I am not as familiar with the 1025 series and I could wish. Ah, if only they could have stayed with the old 612 series. A solid, dependable series, stable, with just enough flexibility to program a personality if you wanted.”

“Uh huh,” Dirk agreed absentmindedly while hitting the button again. There was almost a pattern there in how the pattern changed. “Hey, Psii?”

“D-rk, plea-- cease wor- on th- -I fo- now, you-- --ing out o- --ange.”

“Shit!” Dirk pushed himself back out of the crawl space. “Psii!”

“J--t b- -atien- --d wait --” Psii’s voice was lost to the static.

Dirk sighed and, after sneaking a nervous glance down the hall toward the cargo bay door, slumped back down into the crawlspace. He was pretty sure Psii was telling him not to work on the VI anymore, but he was also sure of there being a pattern. He crawled back and hit the reset button again, watching where the lit boxes were. He hit the button several more times and yeah, yeah there was a pattern there.

He cycled it back to the pattern he thought was the starting pattern, and frowned. If he was supposed to get them all into one stack, that wouldn’t work because each stack was five high, but there were seven lit blocks.

Experimentally, he poked one of the lit blocks. It slid back in, and another on the same level popped out in a different stack. He poked that one, and it went dark again while the original slid back out. He poked a different one, and the same thing happened.

There was no way he could get all the lit blocks in the same stack: a stack had five slots and there were seven lit blocks.

He had some fun rearranging the blocks into various shapes, testing to see how they’d move and hitting the reset button. Probably if Psii knew he was doing this he’d be yelling at him, but Dirk was bored and running out of lessons on his omnitool. Finally he heard the crackle of the radio coming into range again.

“Hello, Dirk? Are you still there?” Jake’s grandma called.

“Yeah, hi, yeah, Ms. English,” Dirk shouted, scrambling back out of the crawlspace.

“Good, sweetie, hello,” she answered. “You’re eating all the fresh vegetables and fruit first like I told you, honey?”

Dirk wrinkled his nose. He didn’t like most of the vegetables he had found in the crew quarters.

“Remember, it’s going to go bad the fastest and we don’t know how long it’ll be before we’re rescued,” she continued. “You don’t want to run out of food up there because you didn’t want to eat your vegetables.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He pulled himself up into the captain’s chair and looked at the glowing radio interface, imagining Miss English’s stern face and wild long grey hair. “It’s just, I don’t like mushrooms. They’re weird.”

“But they’re good for you. Why, they’re Jake’s favorite food.” There was a scuffling sound and a muffled “Npp-” Miss English gave a breathy laugh and said, “Honest.”

Dirk perked up. “Really?”

“No!” Jake burst into the transmission.

“Jake, shush,” Miss English laughed. “Dirk, eat them anyway. I wasn’t lying about you needing to eat all the perishables first before they go bad.”

Dirk frowned and kicked at the console. “Fine.”

“Good, sweetie. Now I’ll let you and Jake chat a bit. Why don’t you describe to Dirk the beach we found, honey.”

“Ok,” Jake sounded happy, which was better than how he’d sounded in their first few transmissions, where he barely spoke and sounded half asleep. The second transmission he had actually been asleep. This was their fifth transmission, now, and Dirk was glad that he sounded almost back to the chipper boy he’d met on the ship.

“You found a beach?” Dirk asked to encourage him.

“Yeah, not more than a mere two hour march through this jungle we’ve found ourselves in!”

Jake spent the next ten minutes describing his grandmother bravely charging through the underbrush of the alien jungle, slashing away at stray branches and vines with her omniblade while Jake limped behind, keeping a sharp eye out for any animals with the armax pistol his grandfather had given him on his last birthday. (He had lovingly shown it to Dirk at one point on the ship. At nine, Jake had been training with small arms under the watchful eye of his grandparents for several years now.)

“And soon enough Grandma broke through, and spread before us was a sea foaming and green with islands dotting it farther out. Jiminy cricket, Dirk, if only you could lay eyes on it I’m sure you’d agree it’s a cracking good vista all around!”

Dirk couldn’t keep the smile from falling from his face at that. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’d much rather be down there.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Jake said. “It’s hot here, I would fair say I haven’t stopped sweating since we landed, and Grandma’s having a terrible time of finding something fresh for us to eat. There’s a couple plants she says are safe enough, but she keeps nattering on about needing a source of protein. There were some great big shelled bruits on the shore that she’s testing out now, but by gum, at least you’ve got mushrooms to eat up there!”

“You don’t like mushrooms either,” Dirk pointed out.

“I’d rather eat mushrooms every day than another one of these MREs,” Jake groaned.

“Alright, Jake, I need to talk to Dirk for a little bit now,” Miss English interrupted. “You don’t have to leave, sweetie,” she added as Dirk heard the sound of shuffling and footsteps. “Ok, hon, has Psii helped you fix the VI yet?”

Dirk drew his knees up under his chin. “No, he thinks it has a virus, I think. I guess the core is corrupted? There’s too many lit blocks to fit in a stack.”

“Hmm.” He could hear Miss English drumming her fingers. “Do you know what the model number for the VI is? I’m no computer savant like Mr. Psii, but I do know my way around a computer or five.”

“He said it was a series 1025, I think. The kind with the three stacks?”

“Hmm, ok.” The drumming continued. “And you said it was corrupted?”

“Well, according to Psii there’s only supposed to be one stack of lit blocks, but there weren’t, there were too many for one stack and they were all scattered around.”

“Yes, it does sound like he’s right, then,” she said. “Normally if that type of VI doesn’t work, it self isolates the corrupted data and you just have to transfer the nodes to a clear partition and reboot it to clear the corrupted data and restart the VI. If they’re all scattered like you’ve described, then it sounds like the corruption is too widespread to isolate. This is, hmm.” There was a shuffling noise. “Hopefully Psii will have an idea of how to fix it when you get in contact with him again.”

“Yeah,” Dirk agreed. He pulled a blanket over his shoulders.

“Dirk, sweetie, we’re getting close to you going out of range. Now don’t worry, Psii’ll figure something out, and if he can’t maybe I can.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Try not to play with it to- much, hon-y. I kno- -t’s tem--ing bu- -ou sh---d wa--”

“You’re going out of range. Bye Ms. English, bye Jake!”

“B- ---d swee-----”

And Dirk was alone again. Or not again. Still. He sighed, his head lolling back before he brought up his omnitool to check the time. It would be an hour and a half before the last of the survivors would be in range. He set a timer so he wouldn’t miss it. Miss Penny wouldn’t be able to help him with the VI, but she was good at telling him about all the different colonies she’d been to, and Mr. Vaughan could tell him how to make food if he didn’t know how to make it. He’d know how to make those mushrooms good.

Miss Penny wasn’t a scientist like Psii or Miss English, she had been the cargo master, she said. She had explained her job during their second conversation. She was in charge of making sure the right cargo was loaded and unloaded at each stop. Mr. Vaughan had been the quartermaster, she said, which meant he was in charge of making sure they had enough food and supplies for the crew, and the passengers when they had them. She said she could help with the computer systems when the VI was back online, since she’d been trained on some of the basic systems too, but she couldn’t help fix anything.

She’d also given him the passcode for the crew quarters, so he didn’t have to break into there. Since that door still closed, he liked to sleep in there.

He slid off the chair and padded down the hall, dragging the blanket along like a cape. Today he was going to see if there was anything good in the crew quarters fridge.

There were no mushrooms in the crew fridge, and they had a much bigger freezer than the passenger cabin, which would make Miss English happy. Dirk munched contentedly on a carrot as he inventoried the pantry and poked curiously through the cupboards in the modest communal kitchen area in the crew quarters. Everything over here was bigger than the stuff available to passengers, but Miss Penny had told him they often only had two or three passengers at a time. The number they had this time was pretty large.

Part of their passenger fee had included food provisions, according to his brother. A lot of ships that took on passengers as a side business even made passengers bring their own food if they had separate facilities like they do here. Bro had said he’d paid someone to get the food they’d need for them. Dirk guessed that must have been Mr. Vaughan, then, since Miss Penny said he did the grocery shopping for the crew, too.

He was back in the captain’s seat in time for the radio to crackle back to life.

“Hello?” he asked, after a minute of silence.

“Oh, hello, boy,” Mr. Vaughan said, sounding surprised. “Are you back over us already?”

“Yeah, it’s every eleven hours, Mr. Vaughan.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Well, Penny’s out doing a bit of exploring. She’ll be sorry she missed you.” Mr. Vaughan clicked something on his side of the line. “You’ll have to tell Jade, that is, Miss English, that there’s a little more variety in our region here that’s edible, and to look for tubers that have serrated leaves there, perhaps they are wider spread. Oh, and let Mr. Psii know that we haven’t come across the plants he described to you for us.” There was a clatter and a yelp, and then he said, “Oh, and let them know we do have terrestrial animals here. So far we’ve observed small rodent like amphibian analogs that are actually fairly tasty. And, ah. Odd looking worm snakes? They are harmless, so far, and actually alarmingly friendly.”

“Really?” A worm snake sounded gross.

“Really.” Mr. Vaughan made a shooing noise, and then Dirk heard the sound of a door closing. “So, Mr. Strider, did you have any questions for us today?”

“Yeah, how do you make mushrooms good?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man I did absolutely nothing for nanowrimo for about 14 days in a row haha. Apparently I'll have to write 3800 words a day to catch up but uhh spoiler alert probably I'm not going to do that lol I'm just impressed I've managed to pick back up again at all this fast because, as anyone who's waited around for white and black or infinity mechanism to update could tell you, speedy updates are not my strong suit


	5. Mission Five: troubled by shapeless things

“Alright, Dirk, describe the configuration of the VI core to me now.” Psii’s patient voice echoed down the crawlspace to where Dirk kneeled, once again, in front of the data core.

“It’s back to position C,” Dirk replied. They’d spent most of the prior cycle going over the patterns Dirk had noticed, and now Psii was trying to determine if any of those patterns indicated enough data isolation to safely reboot the VI.

So far, nothing much had worked.

“Alright, try--”

“Sthicking it up your pormatic canal!” 

“Mituna! You’re supposed to help show me how to set up the water filtration system!”

“Huh?” Dirk jerked around, as if getting a visual on the command console radio feed would provide any useful information. “Roxy?”

“Oh, are you talking to Dirk, Psii? Can I talk to Dirk? Please? I know you guys are busy but-” 

“No, child, he have to reboot the VI, I’ve told you that takes priority-”

“But I just want to make sure he’s okay, have you even asked him if he’s okay? I won’t take long, come on, please?” Roxy had always impressed him by how fast she could spit out a sentence. He could imagine her hanging off the old salarian the way she’d hang off her mom when begging a favor.

“No,” Psii shouted. “You do not understand the severity of the situation! It is quite likely that with the VI out of commission, the environmental and propulsion systems on board have become destabilized, which could be very detrimental to both us and Dirk! He’s already stated that it’s getting colder, which is a bad sign, a very bad sign indeed! We must complete this work!”

“But--”

“Roxy,” Dirk called, popping his head out of the crawlspace to hear her as clear as possible. “I’m okay, Roxy! Psii is helping me reboot the ship.”

“Really?” Roxy replied over the sound of Psii’s exasperated demands that she leave. “That’s so cool! I’ve been helping Mituna and Aesarth around camp! We’ve already made a garden and composting and a bathroom which was groooooooss, and now we’re setting up a water filtration system!”

“Roxy, please!” Psii cut her off, probably by putting his hand over her mouth if the muffled protests were any indication. “I need to speak to Dirk without distractions. Once we can confirm that the ship is in stable orbit and that the life support systems are fully functioning, you may talk to him then. Now please. Mituna, take her and show her how to set up a basic water filtration system. Now.” 

Dirk could hear both Mituna and Roxy’s protesting voices grow quieter and then abruptly shut off, and the sound of a door sealing. He guessed Psii must have kicked them out of the escape pod.

“Alright, now then. Dirk.” Psii sounded more irritated than usual, though Dirk thought all salaraians sounded irritated just in general. “Clearly it will be difficult to make much progress when I estimate we have roughly five minutes left before you go out of range. So far you’ve demonstrated effectively that the traditional method of isolation and restart will be ineffective in terms of returning the VI to full functionality. I will have to ruminate on methods to do so during the time you are out of communication.”

He paused, and Dirk realized he was waiting for a reply. “Right.”

“During your communication with English, you may try to reboot the VI using any methods she suggests, but I want to discourage you from playing around with the VI while you’re isolated from any adult guidance. Heaven knows if you’re anything like Roxy,” the irritation in his voice when he said her name came through loud and clear, “you are no doubt as curious and investigative as she is, but I would like to prevent as much damage to the VI core as possible, so Dirk. I must insist, do not play with the VI core when not in communication with an adult!”

Dirk sighed and idly pressed one of the dark squares. It emitted a quiet, clear ping and slid out, lighting up. The breath left him in a puff. “Psii?” he tried to interrupt.

“The VI core of any system is by nature built to be stable and difficult to damage or reprogram, naturally to prevent any chance of it going rogue. However, we do not know the extent of the damage--”

“Psii!” Dirk shouted. “One of the dark squares lit up when I pressed it.”

“What?”

“I said, one of the dark squares lit up when I pressed it.”

“I ca-- -ear you, y--re go--g ou- -- ra---,” the rest of what Psii wanted to say dissolved into static.

Dirk heaved a sigh and pressed the now lit up block. It stayed lit and didn’t retract like the other blocks did.

That was new. 

\---

“That is unusual! Perhaps you need to configure the core in such a way the tonal blocks are in one column, and the, no, that wouldn’t work, you said the block that made the sound didn’t retract or make it again. Hmm.” Miss English was much nicer than Psii, but not as good at coming up with ideas to try. “Have you tried getting them all to light up?”

“Psii doesn’t like when I do stuff to the VI core without him there to tell me what to do,” Dirk answered.

“Well, I can’t think of anything else to try right away, so why don’t you do that. But not right now, sweety, Jake’s just about fit to burst so I better let him have his time with you.” He could hear the smile in her voice.

Jake was quite excited to tell Dirk about roasting one of those shelled crustaceans they’d found on their beach, and about how his sister Jade and their grandfather discovered they had landed on an island much like the one he and his grandmother now inhabited. Dirk curled up in his chair, wrapped in a blanket against the chill, and tried to imagine the humid jungles and vast oceans Jake described to him. 

The time they had to speak to each other was much too short.

After they were out of range, Dirk ducked back down to the VI core and began trying Miss English’s idea. Each darkened block made a musical tone when he touched it, and none of them were the same. Dirk grinned in triumph as he hit the final block to make all of them to light up. Finally! 

The data core modules began to sink into their slots, then jerked to a stop. The smile fell from his face as they all flickered and then flashed out a familiar series of patterns before settling, once again, into Position D. 

“Ugh!” Dirk threw up his hands, and crawled back out of the cockpit to take a nap.

\---

Dirk woke suddenly, jerking up and away from those grasping claws, falling, falling-- thump. “Ow.”

He sat up on the floor and rubbed his head, then paused. Faintly, he thought he heard-- a melody, the chime his brother’s omnitool would give when he received a message, a cheerful little eight note melody. The breath froze in his lungs.

Dirk tried to move; he couldn’t. This wasn’t-- the monsters in his dreams were real, and behind that cargo bay door. Sometimes he could still hear them, scraping against it.

Silence.

He shuddered, gathered his knees under him and pulled the blanket up around his head. His brother was dead, AR had told him. He couldn’t be out there, anymore.

The sound fizzed out faintly again. He shuddered and stood up, took a shuffling step forward. The melody sang out again as he came even with the door to Vaughan’s tiny privacy hutch. A quick scan of the common area showed that it was empty except-- 

A tiny orange flicker caught his eye, flashing in time to the ringtone.

The VI port.

The melody sounded again, and then went silent as Dirk’s omnitool buzzed out its alarm. Time to talk to Psii again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to mention in the notes last time that I am obviously basing this VI core fixing method from [me1's noveria mission.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usxoBzZ7lsI) yeah it really doesn't make much sense to me either but whatcha gonna do, I'm just staying true 
> 
> if you wanna bug me at my tumblr I'm [here](http://proserpine-in-phases.tumblr.com)


End file.
